Good news/bad news: There are no new nightly tournaments on the schedule. However the New Jersey Poker Classic events just popped up in the WSOP NJ and 888 Poker lobby. It’s quite a nice series featuring a $500 buy-in with a $100,000 guaranteed prize pool, a $320/$65k and a $1k high roller 6-max with $50k guaranteed.

This is too nice of a series just to show up in the lobby and not have even been tweeted or emailed about seven days prior to the start of the series. The online series never seem to get promoted as much as they should be, in my opinion. Social media is a powerful tool and could help with the promotion of these events.

Borgata / Party / PlayMGM

Major changes/announcements: PlayMGM Poker has launched and is running daily satellites until Dec. 3 into the $10k WPT Bellagio 5 Diamond Classic being held in Las Vegas, Dec. 5-10.

Good news/bad news: The GSSS online series is over and was a success. A fun side competition organized by the Borgata Poker ambassadors involved a five-team draft with the winning team members each earning $250.

Team Gagliano (team members: BiggDaddy, Gags30, JohnnyDrama, katarina, La_Flama_Banca, mooseman1710, PocketProfits, shipthesherb, SLHalper13, WilfordBrimley) came out ahead for the win just 68 points ahead of second-place finisher Team Stout. The top point earner was Team Kerstetter’s ‘Rick_Grimes’.

The competition was a fun surprise for the players and a great way to foster and promote online poker in New Jersey. The Borgata ambassadors did a great job reaching out to the players and the community for this promotion as well as promoting the GSSS.

The WPT satellites running daily right now on PlayMGM are an encouraging presence in NJ online poker. In addition to this comprehensive satellite steps structure, from Nov. 2-30 the top three leaderboard finishers on PlayMGM will earn entry into the Dec. 3 $535 satellite into the $12k WPT Bellagio package.

With Borgata being the clear leader in number of players qualifying online, as well as leaderboard promotions and prizes, an interesting idea would be to combine the two by creating a leaderboard series during the live events at Borgata, with the prizes being entries into online events.

This would not only bring added value to the prize pool for the players but would be great exposure for online poker, merging the experiences potentially for many of the players.

PokerStars

Major changes/announcements: Satellites are now being offered to the 2018 PokerStars Caribbean Adventure.

New tournaments: Daily satellites to the 2018 PCA in the Bahamas range from free to $1,000 running Oct. 27 to Nov. 4.

Prize pool/Structure changes: None

Upcoming online series: TBA

Good news/bad news: PokerStars adding satellites online in NJ to the 2018 PCA is hopefully a result of the many players who requested they run something like this, and this is great to see. The PokerStars satellites have always been the best in the world. The ones they are offering in NJ are perfect for this market.

Sign Up For The Grove Report – US Online Gambling Industry Insights
Delivered To Your Inbox:

Katie Stone -
Katie Stone is a professional poker player who lives in New Jersey. After moving to Mexico after Black Friday, she returned to her home state of New Jersey in 2014 when online poker became legalized there.